Travel Map

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Desert Wind

Moving to a new city is always challenging. There's the issue of obtaining basic necessities: food, water, shelter. After those needs are met, there are others that beg to be exercised. I never expected to feel isolated in a city of 20 million people. Being in a new "mega city" has its perks (so I'm told): less pollution, noise and otherwise, less crowding, less trash, etc. However, I find it lacking in one of the fundamental privileges of living in a city: people. Since the world changed tactics and left the agrarian life aside humans have adapted to overcrowding and rationing resources. But in the city there was more life! More access to one's desires. The view my window affords me is of a stone wall. Desert trees break the monotony of tan but bring no sense of life to the view. The only people I see from my window are the guards employed by the University to see to our safety. A few of them chat, laugh, drive by on golf carts but the sense of isolation is acute.

Many of my fellow adventurers are having difficulties adjusting to the location, I feel like I never left home, it just got hotter. Here in "little America" we are denied the opportunities that living off-campus would have provided. I want to experience the city! I want to be subjected to "noise pollution;" in fact, I can't sleep in stone-silence and have always needed some proof of life in order to feel comfortable enough to sleep. I think on the tribes of Bedouins existing in desert silence with only a small group as a buffer to the loneliness. I couldn't do it.